Awakening on Orbis (31 page)

But before he could finish the insult, I landed on Queykay and delivered a thunderclap to his neck.

“You really are dumb,” I said as Queykay crumpled underneath me. I saw the Preservation Forces scrambling in the other room, so I pushed into Ketheria’s door and jammed the energy field, preventing the others from entering. Two of Queykay’s brood had escaped and sunk their teeth into my robotic arm. I already had the pain turned off. I felt nothing, but more were crawling toward my feet.

“Wrong arm, kids,” I said, and flicked them off. They screamed as they splattered against the wall. The others hesitated between their father and me before choosing to retreat. They were not very brave now that he was unconscious.

“Switzer!” I turned and saw him slipping to his knees as Charlie pulled on his right arm.

“Vairocina, what did you give him?”

“I told you it was a lot of information. I didn’t know what exactly to leave out or if you would have another chance to do this again. He will be fine in a moment.”

“We don’t have a moment!”

“Switzer! Switzer!” I yelled. I turned and saw the guards hacking their way through the wall, bypassing the energy field all together. A chunk of the wall landed on the floor. They were almost through.

“Uh . . . too much . . .” he groaned, his eyes rolling back in his head. I remembered when this happened to Theodore; he was out for a whole cycle.

“Switzer. Do you have it all? Come on. We have to go!”

Charlie helped me get Switzer to his feet. He was barely conscious. There was no way he could jump, let alone take Charlie with him.

The forces were almost through the wall.

“Take his belt,” Charlie said.

“What?”

“Take his belt and jump with all three of us.”

“But I’ve never used a belt,” I told him. “I don’t know —”

“The belt is only there to create the pathway for me and him. You do not even need it.”

“But what if it doesn’t work. What if I —”

“You’ll do fine. You’re a Space Jumper.”

I unclipped the belt from Switzer’s waist. It was warm. I slipped it around my own and let it hang down over my right thigh. There was no time to adjust it. I held up the other side with my left arm.

“Grab him and get close to me,” I told Charlie. “And if this doesn’t work, I’m sorry.”

I pictured the city of Murat in my head and interfaced with the belt. I activated the only button on the belt that I had ever seen before — the button that I thought had once killed Switzer, back on Orbis 2. It felt like forever before the smell of stinky feet invaded my senses.

I half expected to find Max waiting for me. I half expected to find Charlie in little pieces at my feet and Switzer lost in some corner of the universe, but none of that came true, especially the Max part. Before I jumped, I had pictured the concert area she had shown me on Murat, recalling my amazement that she had remembered my interest in music and thinking it was one of the finest moments of my life. Standing on the stone steps with only Charlie and Switzer at my side, I looked up as the ring unrolled its shadow across the city.

“Where are you, Max?” I whispered.

“We’ll find her,” Charlie replied.

“Vairocina?” I called out.

“You’re safe!” she cried.

“You have to tell me if anyone puts another trace on me, all right? And don’t worry about Switzer. According to the central computer, he’s dead, but you need to give me as much time as you can. I can’t risk what they did to Ganook.”

“Of course,” she said.

“Can you find any sign of Theodore?”

“No, I’ve been looking. I cannot trace his staining unless a Citizen initiates it, and can find no record of this happening. The Keepers may have done it, but I have not been able to breach their security.”

“Then you have to get ahold of Theylor for me. I need to meet with him, but be very careful. I don’t know who’s on what side anymore. After you establish a meeting place, check to see if a trace is placed on me. If there is, then we’ll know what side Theylor is on.”

“Where do you want to meet him?”

“Across from the Center for Relief and Assistance. I think I might know where they are holding Theodore.”

While we waited for Theylor, Vairocina discovered two different traces placed on me.

“Can you trust him?” Switzer said.

“I want to,” I replied, refusing to believe that it was Theylor who had initiated the trace. “We need to keep moving.”

The more I jumped around Murat, the more obvious it seemed that war was coming to the Rings of Orbis. Vairocina had given Switzer plenty of coordinates for Murat, and this enabled us to move freely. Each time we jumped, we found barricaded streets, closed trading chambers, and barely a person to be seen. The three of us stuck out everywhere we jumped, so we glued ourselves to the shadows.

When Vairocina informed me that Theylor was waiting for us, I jumped once more to shake off anyone who might be tracing me. Switzer was walking on his own now, but not saying too much except to warn me.

“I don’t trust those two-headed space monkeys,” he hissed.

“I trust Theylor,” I reassured him.

Across from the Keepers’ aid center, I saw Theylor standing near one of those sleeper arches that Theodore had used. I watched him open a capsule and place something inside it. He closed it and slipped away.

“I’ll get it,” Charlie said. “You stay here.”

Theylor was being careful. That worried me. How bad were things now? Charlie returned with a tap and handed it to me. I pushed in and grabbed Theylor’s message.

“Wait here,” I told them, and stepped out into the open courtyard. I felt naked.

On the tap were simple instructions, yet they were odd just the same. Theylor instructed me to walk across the stone plaza and jump when I reached the center. I was supposed to jump to the darkened alley directly across from the center, less than thirty meters away.

“Good,” Theylor said when I had refocused in the shadow of the empty alley. “If anyone was following you, they would assume you jumped far from here. Follow me.”

The Keeper turned away, his purple robe brushing against my leg. Another fifty meters down the alley and the Keeper pushed opened the dull-looking door of a lifeless building. Inside, the air felt bitter, as if trapped in a long-sealed metal container.

“How are you?” he asked, and offered me a metal crate for a seat.

“I’m good, Theylor, but I can’t say the same for the Rings of Orbis.”

“No, you are right. It seems the Council wants a war and the Descendants of Light are willing to oblige.”

“Drapling?”

Theylor removed a small light source from the depths of his rope and placed it on the floor. The blue light exposed the veins glowing under his skin like circuits in a computer. “They feel empowered by the presence of the Scion. They believe the Ancients will return now,” he confessed.

“Will they?”

“It is foolish to believe that the Ancients are still alive, Johnny. This is the reason we have worked so hard to bring you and your sister to the Rings of Orbis. Humans were the last chance for this universe. The Ancients sacrificed everything when they found your Earth, so isolated from everything else in the galaxy. Yet they feared that humans were too far along in their evolution to ever seed a Scion. To solve this, they moved backward through time, to find the precise moment to best alter the human race and seed your fate. It was almost ninety thousand rotations ago that this journey began. You were the very last component of the intricate project. But what the Ancients did is something that breaks all rules of physics. You cannot go backward in time without destroying what you leave; it is a one-way journey. However, the Ancients knew that unless they did so, someone like your sister could never be born.

“This was their sacrifice, and they have succeeded. The Scion has almost completed her enlightenment. We are so close to fulfilling the dream of the Ancients. Ketheria will have the power to enlighten every one of us and connect us all to the Source. It is our only defense against the Knull.”

“How can she do this from the rings?”

Theylor did not answer.

“But she’s gone now. What’s going to happen?” I pressed.

Theylor shook his head. I was suddenly aware of how familiar he was now with Earth gestures.

“Why can’t you find her?” I said. “That’s why you agreed to the staining in the first place, isn’t it? How else could you keep track of her? You knew back then.”

“We do not understand how she’s doing it. Drapling is livid. Somehow she has cloaked her staining. She is nowhere to be found. In our defense, we had never stained a Scion before.”

“You never stained my sister before,” I reminded him.

“You must find her and bring her to us.”

“I don’t think she’ll come.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because if she trusted you, she would have gone to you already.”

“It is the Descendants of Light who cannot be trusted. They want to
use
the Scion just as the Council would use a weapon. They believe she can unite the knudniks and the new Citizens against the Council and the First Families. The DOL have never forgotten the humiliation and loss caused by the War of Ten Thousand Rotations. They are convinced that the Scion can bring them revenge.”

“Can she?”

“She is the Scion. Of course she can.”

“I have no idea where she is,” I told him.

Both of Theylor’s heads stared at me, each one creased withanxiety.

“But —”

I interrupted him. “Do you know where Theodore is? Is he where they held Switzer?” If anyone knew Ketheria’s whereabouts, it was Theodore. I was certain of it.

Theylor shook his head and said, “We have been trying, all of us.”

“Trying what?” I asked.

“To keep him alive. The Trading Council has charged him with treason. The penalty is death, even for a Citizen.”

“You have to stop them!”

“The Council has convinced the Citizens that unless the Scion is controlled, she is a threat to their well-being. The Citizens have granted the Council control over every aspect of life on the rings, and they have banned the Keepers from participating in any decisions. This in itself is grounds for war, but the Trust does not want to attack until the Scion is located. I am afraid that Theodore, as he has been so close to you and Ketheria, is merely being used as a pawn in all of this. They are using him as an example of the Council’s ability to deal with the growing rebellion of knudniks and to convince the Citizens that they can use force over the Scion’s power.”

“How can I get to him?”

“I am afraid it’s impossible. He is guarded more carefully than the Ancients’ Treasure.”

“I already got through that defense,” I reminded him.

As I feared, Theodore was being held in the same facility that Switzer had called home for so many phases. Theylor could not provide entry, as the Keepers had been banned from entering the holding area, and he was convinced that the Trading Council would carry out Theodore’s sentence, with or without a war.

I first thought about simply jumping into Theodore’s holding cell, but I didn’t know which one it was, nor did Theylor. In fact, he believed they were using Theodore as bait to lure me into a trap. But if they were, why wouldn’t they simply declare his location to me?

“Oh, this is ridiculous,” Switzer said, bolting to his feet, as Charlie and I were discussing an assortment of strategies. “Why can’t we just walk into the Keepers’ building, use the light chute, and jump our way through? That’s what we do. We’re Space Jumpers! How many times do I have to remind you of that important fact?”

“He might be right,” Charlie agreed.

“And remember: we have the Hulking Honock here. He’s a regular superhero, if you ask me. I’m sure he could crack a few heads if they overwhelm us.”

“You can’t do that,” I told him. “We don’t have any weapons, and we don’t have a clue what their defenses are. For all we know, they could have changed the path of the chute and directed it right into a holding cell that we can’t jump out of. We may be Space Jumpers, but you seem to have forgotten most of what we learned at the Hollow.”

“Well, my way has worked a million times before,” he said, almost pouting.

“You’re not a wormhole pirate anymore, Switzer. Look, I’m going to do this myself. I’m going to jump in there and grab Theodore and then jump out. You don’t have any coordinates, and at least I know how to get inside.”

“How are you going to bring him out? You don’t even have a belt!”

“I’ll use yours.”

“And leave me here with nothing? Did you pop a chip? What if you get caught? No way. You’re not taking my belt.”

“Switzer. There’s no other way!”

“JT, another trace has been placed on you,” Vairocina whispered in my ear.

“How long do we have?” I asked her.

“They’re close, maybe a fraction of a diam. If you jump now, you might be able to shake the trace.”

“Thanks,” I told her, and turned to Switzer. “Come on. We can’t stay here.”

We jumped to the far side of Murat, near the restaurant I went to with Max and Theodore. My whole life seemed marked by moments with them. I had to find them.